The results of the U.S. Pentagon's internal probes into the October 3 bombing of a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan raised "more questions than answers" as reports of the military's alleged "human error" emerged on Wednesday.

The pair of investigations, which trickled out by way of the mainstream media, reduced the attack on the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital to series of human errors and technical glitches. They show that despite the medical charity's documented efforts to alert commanders to the onslaught, those signals did not reportedly reach the trigger team until it was "too late," resulting in the deaths of at least 31 civilians and injuring 28 more.

Among observers—including the head of MSF—the findings have raised some eyebrows as well as questions such as: What about the hour-long attempts to stop the bombing? How does this compare to MSF's own investigation? Why are these damning reports being released the day before Thanksgiving? And what does this say about the competency of the U.S. military?

Responding to the news that gunmen erroneously relied on a physical description of the compound to carry out the attack and had intended to strike a building 450 yards away, Stokes continued: "It appears that 30 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of people are denied life-saving care in Kunduz simply because the MSF hospital was the closest large building to an open field and 'roughly matched' a description of an intended target."

"The frightening catalogue of errors outlined today illustrates gross negligence on the part of U.S. forces and violations of the rules of war," he added, reiterating the organization's call for independent and impartial investigation into the attack.

The top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John F. Campbell, said Wednesday that several service members had been suspended from duty after an internal military investigation of the American airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz last month.

Calling the airstrike a “tragic mistake,” General Campbell read a statement announcing the findings of the investigation, which he said concluded that “avoidable human error” was to blame, compounded by technical, mechanical and procedural failures. He said that another contributing factor was that the Special Forces members in Kunduz had been fighting continuously for days and were fatigued. ...

General Campbell and his staff did not say how many people were being disciplined, or how. But a senior United States military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that one of those punished was the Army Special Forces commander on the ground in Kunduz during the fighting. The official would not identify the commander by name, but said the officer, a captain, was relieved of his command in Afghanistan on Wednesday morning. ...

The general confirmed that Médecins Sans Frontières, the French name of Doctors Without Borders, had succeeded in reaching the Special Forces commander to inform him of the attack about 12 minutes into the airstrike, at 2:20 a.m. But he said the strike was not called off until 2:37 a.m. — after the aircrew had already stopped firing. But that timeline does not agree with accounts by the aid group and other witnesses, who said the strike went on for more than an hour.

The aid group, which has called for an independent, nonmilitary international inquiry into the airstrike, was sharply critical of General Campbell’s remarks.

A memo about how the George W. Bush administration interpreted a ban on assassination can be kept secret, along with other legal documents about the drone war, a federal appeals court said in a ruling made public Monday. ...

Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York said that widespread discussion about the drone program by administration officials, as well as the leak of a so-called white paper from the Justice Department, outlining its legal reasoning for killing a U.S. citizen, had mooted the case for so much secrecy. The court ordered the government to release a July 2010 memo that cleared the way for killing Anwar al Awlaki. Two otherdocuments discussing the CIA’s role in such killings were also made public last year, in heavily redacted form.

Today’s decision from the court centered on 10 remaining documents that the Justice Department argued did not have to be released.

One of the documents at issue was a March 2002 memo, which, in the government’s description, “provided legal advice regarding the assassination ban in Executive Order 12333.” (The order, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, upholds a ban on assassination first issued by Gerald Ford in 1976.)

The memo might get at the heart of a debate about the United States’ lethal counterterrorism missions, carried out by drone or other means: Why is the killing of select individuals, far from conventional battlefields, without a trial, not assassination?

The atrocities committed in the latest Paris attacks rightly horrify us, but they should surprise no one, least of all the French. An outraged President Francois Hollande announced that “France is at war,” but of course that has been the case for more than a year, since France started bombing Islamic State forces in Iraq and later in Syria. Why did he only announce the fact after French citizens had died? He apparently hoped that the war would not inconvenience his own people, perhaps that they wouldn’t even notice the conflict. ...

This kind of terrorism simply is another weapon of war. Imagine if the Islamic State was a normal nation. No one would have been surprised had ISIL fighter planes shot down French aircraft engaged in France’s nearly 300 bombing runs over the “caliphate.” There might have been shocked disbelief at such a defeat of French arms, but no moral outrage. The same would be the case if ISIL planes had retaliated by striking Paris. Again, that would have been a routine act of war. After all, France had attacked Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto capital, in October. The U.S. has bombed the capital of every major adversary since World War II: Rome, Berlin, Tokyo, Pyongyang, Hanoi, Belgrade, Baghdad, and Tripoli.

ISIL undoubtedly had the desire but not the capability to retaliate directly. So it turned to terrorism. While President Hollande studiously ignored his role in the tragedy, the 129 people slaughtered on the streets of Paris ultimately paid the price of his government’s decision to go to war. Of course, those killed did not deserve to die. But said one of the killers, “It’s the fault of your president, he should not have intervened in Syria” and Iraq.

Western governments which loose the dogs of war should stop assuming that their own people will not be bitten. Being a liberal democracy does not turn bombing and killing into an act of immaculate conception. Instead of pretending that their nations enjoy immunity from the inevitable horrors of war, Western officials should make the case to their people that the likely costs are worth the benefits. In this case that includes the possibility, perhaps likelihood, of terrorist attacks at home. There are no certainties even for America, which has done surprisingly well since 9/11. ...

The most obvious victims of the Paris attacks are those killed and wounded, and their families and friends. But perhaps the greater outrage is that after turning his nation into a target President Hollande used the new attacks to justify more intervention, telling the French parliament that Syria is “the biggest factory of terrorists the world has ever known,” a manifest untruth. After downplaying the risks of war, failing to even admit that France was at war as it bombed other nations and killed other peoples, the French president emerged surrounded by his security detail to pose as a decisive political leader.

Worse, the Paris attacks encouraged Republican presidential candidates to become even more irresponsible, calling for more war against more people. ... Yet none of the Republicans explained how deeper involvement in the Middle East’s burgeoning sectarian conflict would promote U.S. interests let alone protect U.S. security.

Russia claimed on Wednesday that Turkey's downing of its warplane was a "planned provocation" — as Turkey said it had simply acted to defend its own security.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia had "serious doubts this was an unintended incident," following a meeting with his counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu, but stressed "We're not going to war against Turkey."

Earlier, Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan said his nation had acted simply to defend its own security and the "rights of our brothers" in Syria. But in Russia's view those "brothers" are Islamic State militants themselves, according to a statement from Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev reported by Russia Today on Wednesday.

"Turkey's actions are de facto protection of Islamic State," he was reported as saying. "This is no surprise, considering the information we have about direct financial interest of some Turkish officials relating to the supply of oil products refined by plants controlled by ISIS."

In a series of tweets on Wednesday morning, Medvevev said Turkey's "criminal" actions had led to a "dangerous aggravation" of relations between Russia and NATO, that Turkey had demonstrated it was protecting IS, and that Turkey could lose important business projects in Russia as a result.

The second Russian airman from the Su-24 shot down by the Turkish air force is “alive and well”, after a 12-hour special operation to save him succeeded, Russian officials have said.

Both airmen ejected from the plane after it was hit by a Turkish F-16 on Tuesday, but the pilot was shot at and killed by fire from the ground, apparently from Syrian Turkmen fighters. ...

The Russian agency LifeNews said the airman was found by an 18-man Syrian special forces team acting together with six members of an elite Hezbollah unit. It said he had hidden for many hours after landing, and was found by a radio signal.

Captain Konstantin Murakhtin, speaking on Russian television after his rescue, said his plane had not crossed into Turkish airspace and denied that there had been any audio or visual warnings from Turkey. Murakhtin added that he knew the area “like the back of my hand”. He is currently receiving medical treatment but said he wanted to stay in Syria and continue flying missions.

Russia has announced the deployment of significant new air defense equipment to the Syria-Turkey border, including the Moskva guided-missile cruiser, which will park off the coast of Latakia to destroy any “target that may pose danger.” ... The Russian Defense Ministry says they are going to cut military contact with Turkey as well in protest over the attack.

The biggest move, however, is likely to be Russia’s announcement that future bombing runs in northern Syria are going to include escorts of fighter jets, a move that is likely to dissuade hasty attacks on the bombers in future incidents along the border.

While US President Barack Obama publicly expressed support for Ankara's right to defend its sovereignty after Turkey shot down a Russian plane it says strayed into its airspace on Tuesday, US officials reportedly believe Turkey needlessly escalated tensions.

CBS News on Tuesday quoted anonymous US officials as blaming Turkey for overreacting to a minor violation of its airspace. ...

The United States believes that the Russian jet shot down by Turkey on Tuesday was hit inside Syrian airspace after a brief incursion into Turkish airspace, a US official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Turkey’s rash decision to shoot down a Russian plane for allegedly violating its airspace isn’t likely to trigger World War III. But Ankara has demonstrated where it stands. With the Islamic State and against the West. The justification for Turkey’s membership in NATO and America’s defense guarantee for Ankara long ago passed. Turkey’s irresponsible action proves that it is no U.S. ally.

The Obama administration’s war against the Islamic State is turning into another interminable conflict that serves the interests of other nations far more than America. U.S. policy has been impossibly incoherent, attempting to do everything: oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, shove aside next door Iran, defeat vicious jihadist insurgents, promote ineffectual “moderate” forces, convince the Gulf States to act against the extremists they’ve been supporting, promote diplomacy without participation by Damascus and Tehran, and convince Turkey to serve U.S. rather than Islamic interests.

While Russia’s September entry into the war outraged Washington, Moscow showed clarity and realism. Russia simply sought to bolster Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad against insurgents dominated by radical Islamists. Ironically, this approach was far more likely than the administration’s confused policy to advance America’s core interest of defeating ISIL and al-Qaeda affiliates such as al-Nusra. The U.S. had little choice but to accommodate Moscow, despite nutty proposals from some Republican presidential candidates to shoot down Russian planes.

However, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan played the fool when his military downed a Russian aircraft, involved in striking territory controlled by al-Nusra. The two governments’ accounts conflict, but no one believes the Putin government had the slightest hostile intent against Ankara. Downing the plane was gratuitously provocative and not necessary for Turkey’s defense. The objectives likely were to interfere with Moscow’s operations against Islamic radicals and/or discourage future Russian strikes against Ankara-backed Islamists. The action obviously was contrary to Washington’s interest, which would be caught in any escalation between Russia and Turkey. Yet NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated that “we stand in solidarity with Turkey and support the territorial integrity of our NATO ally, Turkey.” ...

Striking nuclear-armed Russia for an alleged overflight lasting just a few seconds appears to be seeking war. The U.S. should shun Ankara for playing chicken with Moscow.

With the US shifting its focus in the Syrian air war away from ISIS targets and toward oil infrastructure, officials say banking records are proving indispensable for military planners looking to decide which refineries are most profitable and, subsequently, will get bombed first. ...

Officials say in theory the airstrikes have cut a third of ISIS’ income from the oil industry, though reports are that areas dependent on ISIS-smuggled oil are seeing rising prices as the supply becomes more scarce, so it’s unclear how much it’s really costing ISIS.

Rather, the big losers here are the communities dependent on this oil revenue to survive, and as they grow more desperate, they will likely have to turn to ISIS for help, since the group still has significant cash reserves. With such attacks, the US may be forcing locals into greater dependence of the ISIS movement.

The report identified the slain as eight Hezbollah fighters and five Syrian soldiers. No reason was given for the attack and, as with several previous Israeli attacks on Syria, there has been no formal statement from the Israeli military confirming the incident, let alone explaining it.

The United States should not accept any Syrian refugees, Zionist Organization of America president Mort Klein told attendees at a gala banquet here Sunday night, adding that many of them hate Jews and Israel. In addition, he said, parents and siblings of terrorists should be deported unless they publicly condemn, in Hebrew and Arabic, the acts of their family member. Klein was speaking to an audience of more than 1,000 people at the 2015 Justice Louis D. Brandeis Award Dinner, held at Manhattan’s Grand Hyatt hotel.

“Don’t bring these refugees here. Treat as pariahs all those who promote radical Islam. ... We must crush radical Islam as we crushed Nazism,” Klein said.

Attendees greeted both of Klein’s proposals with wild applause. It was one of several moments of right-wing ideology met by popular — though perhaps, given the $700 per person ticket price, not populist — acclaim.

Klein was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany to parents who survived the Holocaust. He was 4 when the family immigrated to Philadelphia, and spoke only Yiddish, he told Haaretz. Asked whether he does not feel, particularly in light of his own background, that there is an ethical imperative for the United States to take in refugees, he said: “As a Jew and as a Zionist, why should I want people who hate me to come to America? Especially when a small chunk might commit terrorist acts against my fellow Americans. It’s perfectly rational. No question most of them are not terrorists, but most hate Jews and Israel.

Bibi the delusional douchebag demands that the international community endorse his massive violations of international law - or the Palestinians get it. Got it?

Netanyahu reportedly told Kerry that if the international community ever wanted to see the Palestinians permitted to build another building in the West Bank they’d have to unconditionally recognize the “right” of Israel to build as it sees fit in the settlements.

For nearly two years Mohamed Soltan, a 26-year-old citizen of both Egypt and America, endured torture, deprivation, and cruelty while locked in the prisons of Egyptian military dictator Abdul Fattah al-Sisi. In 2013, he was among thousands arrested in a country-wide crackdown on civil society activists, journalists, and members of the deposed government following Sisi’s coup and massacre of protestors in Cairo’s Raba’a Adawiya Square.

Soltan was released this year after a 400-day hunger strike in which he lost over 130 pounds and nearly died, saved only by the intervention of the American government on his behalf. Despite bending to pressure in his case, the Egyptian regime continues to imprison as many as 41,000 other political prisoners, recent Human Rights Watch estimates suggest. And Soltan worries that extremism is incubating in those facilities, where he witnessed and experienced torture. Today, he says that, through its oppressive practices, the Sisi government is effectively acting as a “recruiting agent” for extremist groups like the Islamic State.

“The regime is fostering an environment in their prisons that makes them a fertile ground for that kind of ideology to flourish,” Soltan says. “The brutality and the overwhelming loss of hope is creating a situation which fits [the Islamic State’s] narrative, and they’re using it to try and recruit people and spread their message.” ...

The developed world's most unequal economies are in struggling southern Europe, closely followed by the U.S. according to a new report from Morgan Stanley. ...

Persistent inequality hurts economic growth over the long run, according to the bank. ... "Past generations of middle-class families, emerging from the post-WWII period, could aspire to improving living standards, with a reasonably sized house, a good education for their children" and dependable pensions, Morgan Stanley economists said in their report Tuesday. "In contrast, middle-class aspirations are now running up against the wall of job and retirement insecurity."

“This is what you guys wanted,” police told protesters after five demonstrators were shot and injured by masked men at a continuing protest in Minneapolis on Monday night, witnesses told the Guardian.

Protesters trying to tend to the wounded were also maced. ...

Having shot five people, the attackers escaped in what looked like a black Toyota SUV, according to Nimo Omar, who was also at the protest.

After the shots, everything was “very chaotic”, Omar said. Several people, including Sumaya Moallin and Oluchi Omeoga, ran back to the precinct to ask the police for help.

Moallin said they needed a squad car and an ambulance. “He looked at me and he said: ‘Call 911,’” she told the Guardian. “I said: ‘I thought you were 911.’ Then he looked at me directly and said: ‘This is what you guys wanted.’”

“Six [officers] were outside [the precinct building],” she continued. “They all just shuffled back into the door. They were not making eye contact ... I pleaded a good amount of time.” ...

Then the police arrived at the scene in force, in full riot gear. Rachel Bean was still tending to [one of the protesters who was shot] stomach wound when they released mace into people’s faces, she told the Guardian. “I said, ‘I called the EMS, you don’t have to mace everyone’,” she said. “The officer said ‘fuck you’ or ‘shut the fuck up’ or something like that.”

She said that attitude was representative of the behavior of other officers she interacted with after the attack.

The day after Laquan died, police officials told the Chicago Tribune that he had “lunged at police” before the officer opened fire. The video shows the opposite. When Van Dyke’s patrol car speeds past Laquan to get in front of him, Laquan, who had been running, slows his jog to a shuffle. He also veers right, away from the highway’s centerline where he had been running, gaining a full lane – or roughly 10-15ft of separation – by the time he was shot.

When the squad car stops, Van Dyke’s exit is briefly obscured by another CPD vehicle; by the time it pulls away just five seconds later, Van Dyke is seen advancing on Laquan with his gun drawn.

Within another three seconds, Van Dyke has taken at least five steps toward Laquan and fired the first pair of shots. Though the shots cannot be heard and the muzzle flash isn’t visible, Van Dyke’s arm clearly bends from the recoil of his pistol.

Almost immediately, Laquan spins backward, either from the force of the first two shots, as a self-protective reflex, or perhaps both. He collapses, and the shots continue from Van Dyke’s weapon, hitting McDonald another 14 times as he lay on the ground.

There were no other officers or civilians in the direction of Laquan’s path away from Van Dyke, and there was no offensive or even sudden movement by Laquan until the first bullets had already struck his body. No other officers on the scene fired their weapons. ...

And yet for all we do now know, there are still many things that the video cannot tell us. ... We ... don’t know what the surveillance footage from the nearby Burger King restaurant would have shown had it not disappeared. A Chicago NBC affiliate reported Tuesday that, according to the restaurant’s district manager, four officers spent three hours with the tape of the incident, and when they left 86 minutes, encompassing the entire shooting, had been erased. The camera is located roughly 100ft from where Laquan died.

Chicago is braced for more protests on Wednesday after anger spilled on to downtown city streets overnight following the release of video footage showing the fatal shooting of a black teenager by a police officer.

Protests are expected outside city hall on Wednesday and demonstrations are being planned to block the city’s main shopping thoroughfare, Michigan Avenue, during the traditional post-Thanksgiving spending bonanza on Friday.

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson said he hoped to see “massive” but peaceful protests.

Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel warned that the city’s residents “will have to make important judgments about our city and ourselves – and go forward”.

The rare decision to bring a murder charge against a member of Chicago law enforcement after the deadly shooting of a resident perhaps contributed to the peaceful and relatively small nature of the demonstration that stretched into the early hours of Wednesday, as agitated crowds gathered in streets, stopped traffic in downtown Chicago and chanted.

On Sunday, Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate who has led the primary polls for months, retweeted a graphic of bogus crime statistics regarding American homicide. The source for the numbers is the Crime Statistics Bureau of San Francisco — an entity that doesn’t exist. The tweet, which features an image of a menacing young black man wielding a gun, claims to break down murders in 2015 based on the race of offenders and victims. While the FBI publishes an annual homicide report that includes this type of data, it hasn’t yet been released — 2015 isn’t over. This logic, unsurprisingly, is lost on the Republican frontrunner.

More disturbingly, however, are the numbers. The graphic in Trump’s tweet says that 97 percent of black murder victims are killed by other black people. According to the most recent FBI data, from the bureau’s 2014 report, 90 percent of black victims were murdered by other black people. The graphic also falsely implies that 81 percent of white murder victims are killed by black people. The 2014 report, in contrast, says that only 15 percent of white murder victims were killed by black people, while 82 percent were killed by white people. The reality is that the vast majority of black victims are killed by black people, just as the vast majority of white victims are killed by white people.

Trump’s dissemination of white supremacist propaganda on crime reflects a longstanding tradition of politicians and law enforcement painting young black people as violent threats wreaking havoc across the country.

Twenty-five years ago, during the height of gruesome drug war rhetoric, the term “superpredator” was introduced to frighten Americans and provide rationale for harsher sentencing and, ultimately, the construction of the carceral state. In 1996, Hillary Clinton, now the leading Democratic candidate, called children in street organizations superpredators, adding that such youth gangsters have “no conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.” ...

Trump’s neo-fascist campaign has been facilitated, presumably for ratings, by many quarters of the American media. He appears so frequently on ABC’s This Week that the network should consider renaming the show This Week with Donald Trump. And the cable networks love him. When he’s on as a guest the questioning hardly ever dives deep into his scurrilous policy proposals; instead, the exchanges are superficial farces.

Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Tuesday that her use of the term “illegal immigrants” was a “poor choice of words” and she pledged not to use it anymore, responding to criticism from immigration activists.

The Democratic presidential frontrunner was asked about her use of the term to describe people who are in the US illegally during a question-and-answer session on Facebook held by Telemundo. The question came from Jose Antonio Vargas, a filmmaker and journalist whose organisation, Define American, has said the terminology is offensive and asked all presidential candidates to stop using it.

“Yes, I will,” Clinton wrote during a stop in Boulder, Colorado. “That was a poor choice of words. As I’ve said throughout this campaign, the people at the heart of this issue are children, parents, families, DREAMers. They have names and hopes and dreams that deserve to be respected.”

DREAMers take their name from the acronym for legislation that lays out a process toward citizenship for immigrants who were brought into the country illegally as children and grew up in the United States.

During a town-hall meeting in New Hampshire earlier this month, Clinton said she voted “numerous times when I was a senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in. And I do think you have to control your borders.”

Betraying her claimed 'committment,' former secretary of state ignores opportunity to 'speak directly to and energize the progressive base'

In what one analyst sees as "a really bad mistake," Hillary Clinton declined to participate in a presidential forum hosted by the 8 million-strong organization MoveOn.org.

Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley did take part in the virtual event in which they answered questions on issues ranging from campaign finance reform to climate change to the Syrian refugee crisis.

"It’s a shame that Secretary Clinton declined to participate in the MoveOn member forum," Anna Galland, the executive director of MoveOn.org Civic Action, said in a statement to The Hill. "She missed an opportunity to speak directly to and energize the progressive base she’ll need in her corner not just to win the nomination but also the general election, if she is the party's nominee."

"Our forum gave grassroots progressives the chance to pose substantive questions directly to presidential candidates—exactly what democracy is about— and we’re grateful to Sen. Sanders and Gov. O’Malley for participating," Galland's statement continued.

In an audio recording of a strategy session obtained by The Intercept,major trade association lobbyists discussed how the refugee crisis has changed the political dynamics in Washington to their advantage.

In the conference call held last week, lobbyists representing a number of high-polluting industries agreed that the battle between Congress and President Obama on refugee policy will give them the cover they need to attach a legislative rider to the omnibus budget bill that rolls back newly expanded clean water regulation. ...

The White House has issued veto threats against previous attempts by Congress to block the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, a regulation finalized this year that extends Clean Water Act protections to millions of acres of wetlands and streams. So attaching a rider blocking WOTUS to the omnibus was potentially going to attract a lot of attention. Until now. ...

The remarks were made during a political strategy call hosted last week by energy utility industry lobbyists. A recording was sent to The Intercept by someone on the call. [Audio of the lobbyists conspiring embedded in the original. - js]

White House officials say Obama is determined to take lead on climate change during talks set to begin on Monday with bilateral meeting with China

Lessons from past failures will help push nations towards a robust climate change agreement that will push down greenhouse gas emissions, the White House has predicted.

The US has promised to take a leadership role during next week’s talks in Paris, with Barack Obama arriving on Sunday night for a number of high-level meetings designed to spur early momentum. ...

White House officials said that the president was determined to show leadership on the issue of climate change as it posed a “clear and present threat” to US national security and an “existential challenge” to developing nations that will bear the brunt of extreme weather events and food insecurity caused by warming temperatures.

“By the time [Obama arrived in Copenhagen] things had already unravelled and then had to be put back together,” he said. “The goal here is to give a push with heads of state at the beginning of the process and then allow [secretary of state John] Kerry and others to finalise the details.”

Starlings have been consistently drowning in large groups in a phenomenon yet to be fully explained by scientists, according to new research led by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

In 12 separate incidents recorded between 1993 and 2013 in England and Wales, starlings were found drowned in groups of two to 80. In 10 cases, at least 10 starlings were found drowned at a time, the research published in the journal Scientific Reports on Wednesday shows.

One expert said that the mass mortalities were “really unusual”, with drowning considered a rare cause of death among wild bird populations and normally only recorded as affecting individual birds.

Records since 1909 of 800,000 ringed birds from 79 species reveal that drowning was more commonly recorded as a probable cause of death in starlings than in any other species.

Post mortems revealed no evidence that underlying disease had been a factor in the incidents which all occurred during the summer and spring months and concerned juvenile birds in most cases.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Comments

the author noted that the Turkmen in Syria were being covered extensively in the news. Four days before the plane was shot down, he sent a tweet saying that he expected something to happen because over the years this has been a way to get the Turkish public ready to support Turkmen somewhere in the world and typically then leads to military action

and the author points out how the tape of warnings was so clear, like it had been made in a studio

The world is now debating the downing of a Russian jet by Turkey. Most observers agree that bringing down that plane was very risky for Turkey. But is no one asking how Turkey had the courage to do this?

i can make cases for and against secret us encouragement of erdogan's actions against russia. it's a pretty stupid thing to bait a nuclear bear, but it's not the sort of thing that i could rule out obama and his neocon minions doing. on the other hand, erdogan seems to like to take stupid risks of his own volition, so i can't rule out that he might have done it without consulting obama.

has he not learned about guerrilla wars from what has happened in recent years? He will not be able to get rid of the Kurds in Turkey by military means.

Turkey got rid of others in their brutal past, so they are capable of forcing mass migration

As you know, the Kurdish region was chopped up by UK and France and split Kurds into different countries. The ongoing war with PKK had settled down and the Kurdish minority had gained a spot in the parliament, and then Erdogan attacked. The people killed in the terrorist attack in Ankara were marching in support of the Kurds and may have been ISIL. Doesn't look like the government wants to find out who did it.

They have more journalists in jail than ISIL people. They have been aiding them.

In any case, what was once a bright spot, Turkey is now known throughout the world as a Islamic state and is becoming more authoritarian day by day.

Erdogan might have planned the downing of the plane, or he might not have, or he might have let it be known that if there was an attack it was OK. or he might have been shocked and worried about what happened. No way to tell the answer to these options.

My main news source dailyzaman.com will probably be shut down along with the other media outlets that are run by the government. And the writers may well end up in jail. When it takes a long time for the page to load I imagine that they have been shut down

I made a post on dailykos about this. What if you made a copy machine and people made copyright copies. Can you sue me? Can you extradite me? Can you seeze all my assets? Can you steal all the information from the millions of customers who have their stuff stored on my machines?

Kim invented megaupload, a file sharing company. The US government as an advocate of the Motion Picture Association of America has gone after Kim in the biggest copyright case in history.

Many violations, no basis in law from my view, and threatened all of us from the overreach of the US government to anyone, anywhere in the world.

Here is the very long legal article filed by Kim's team. My hunch is that it will be read by attys for years to come. Very well done

By the time I finished the second article I tended to agree that Russia is a better ally in the middle east than Turkey. I know that Putin is terrible, but in a cold foreign policy sense, he is right to oppose ISIL.

Here are some points from the second article which is this one the one on Turkey downing the Russian plane. By the end the author is saying that the US should get our of NATO

Indeed, Turkey is merely the latest example of alliance members seeking to drag the U.S. into conflicts of no interest to America.

then he says

Britain and France largely orchestrated the Libya war, in which Washington helped deconstruct yet another Muslim country without purpose.

Joe - do you agree with this? I have not spent enough time to know if this is true

WTF - hasn't the US military on your soil lead to no good? Again, This is reasonable, but no first hand reading of stories on this

NATO members in Eastern Europe, most notably the Baltics, want American garrisons even though they were not viewed as vital U.S. security interest even during the height of the Cold War.

this passing comment on Ukrane is more or less true?

Georgia and Ukraine are more distant and aren’t members of the alliance but they, too, want America to confront a nuclear-armed power on its border over interests at most peripheral for Washington.

and - but the US wants allies and wars. Look at Nick Turse's work on the gearing up of US presence in Africa. And there is the "pivot to Asia" so this next point doesn't seem to be the case

The U.S. should disentangle itself from the defense of its free-riding “allies.”

and the author says

Moscow is a better and more reliable partner than Turkey for America in the Middle East. Vladimir Putin is a nasty character. Under him Russia is acting like a traditional great power, focused on protecting security and winning respect, without the slightest concern for liberal Western values. He has created an ugly autocracy at home, suppressing the civil liberties and political freedoms Americans and Europeans value

Turkey supports ISIL and other militant Muslim movements and is now an autocratic society

By the time I finished the second article I tended to agree that Russia is a better ally in the middle east than Turkey. I know that Putin is terrible, but in a cold foreign policy sense, he is right to oppose ISIL.

yes, putin is probably not a saint, he's suppressed (possibly with extreme prejudice) journalists and opposition activists among some other not-so-nice things.

but when you think about it, what we are looking for is an ally. the us standard for allies is pretty low. putin looks pretty good compared to a large number of the blood-stained head-chopping butchers that we have allied with both currently (i'm looking at you, saudi arabia, bahrain, kuwait and qatar) and in the past - remember when joe stalin was our friend?

putin is not unacceptable based upon any moral or political standard that america has ever lived up to.

that said, he has already demonstrated that he has the will and the ability to make a serious dent in, not only isis, but a whole array of nasty jihadist groups that are festering in the vacuum that the united states has created by its decades of imperial dithering in the middle east.

Britain and France largely orchestrated the Libya war, in which Washington helped deconstruct yet another Muslim country without purpose.

Joe - do you agree with this? I have not spent enough time to know if this is true

yes, i believe that he is correct in this. i remember reading that france in particular was quite eager to rid the world of gaddafi, because its ginormous water corporations coveted libya's water resources (and everybody wanted libya's oil).

according to the wikipedia chronology of the 2011 intervention that ended in gaddafi's demise, sarkozy was the first western imperialist to wave the green flag by uttering the demand that gaddafi had to go.

Chronology

21 February 2011: Libyan deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Ibrahim Dabbashi called "on the UN to impose a no-fly zone on all Tripoli to cut off all supplies of arms and mercenaries to the regime."[39]

23 February 2011: French President Nicolas Sarkozy pushed for the European Union (EU) to pass sanctions against Gaddafi (freezing Gaddafi family funds abroad) and demand he stop attacks against civilians.

25 February 2011: Sarkozy said Gaddafi "must go."[54]

26 February 2011: United Nations Security Council Resolution 1970 was passed unanimously, referring the Libyan government to the International Criminal Court for gross human rights violations. It imposed an arms embargo on the country and a travel ban and assets freeze on the family of Muammar Al-Qadhafi and certain Government officials.[55]

28 February 2011: British Prime Minister David Cameron proposed the idea of a no-fly zone to prevent Gaddafi from "airlifting mercenaries" and "using his military aeroplanes and armoured helicopters against civilians."[44]

1 March 2011: The US Senate unanimously passed non-binding Senate resolution S.RES.85 urging the United Nations Security Council to impose a Libyan no-fly zone and encouraging Gaddafi to step down. The US had naval forces positioned off the coast of Libya, as well as forces already in the region, including the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise.[56]

this passing comment on Ukrane is more or less true?

Georgia and Ukraine are more distant and aren’t members of the alliance but they, too, want America to confront a nuclear-armed power on its border over interests at most peripheral for Washington.

yes, that also comports with what i've read. georgia has virtually nothing to offer the us that would be considered an interest other than proximity to russia and bragging rights for peeling it away from russia's orbit. ukraine has some assets (farmland and gas) but it is constantly at risk of various armed factions bursting into armed revolt, its economy is in the toilet, what decrepit infrastructure that it had is in tatters and it is so deeply corrupt that putting the state on a firm enough footing to support a business culture for the west to exploit would cost more money than it's worth risking.

The report also found that maps used by the U.S. Special Forces ground commander “did not label the MSF compound as containing a medical facility, and that the MSF medical facility was not marked so as to distinguish it as a protected medical establishment,” the report said.

According to the report, neither the U.S. Special Forces ground commander nor the gunship commander had access to the “no strike” list of targets – including MSF’s hospital – which were supposed never to be attacked.

“This was a tragic mistake. U.S. forces would never intentionally strike a hospital or other protected facilities,” Gen. Campbell said. However, he did not address whether those military personnel currently suspended will face charges as a result of negligence or dereliction of duty.

U.S. President Barack Obama has said he was sorry for the attack – perhaps the worst atrocity arising from U.S. military action in Afghanistan – but the apology was brief and private, delivered in a phone call to MSF international president Joanne Liu.

In announcing the investigations findings on Wednesday, Gen. Campbell didn’t explain what, if any, lessons learned will result in changed procedures or new safeguards.

from the comments:
"More than 30 people dead and the terrorist gets a suspension!"

The hospital was clearly marked,coordinates were given and what's the explanation for ignoring the immediate phone calls from MSF demanding a halt to the attack and the attack continued?

Nato deliberately bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the war in Kosovo after discovering it was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications.

According to senior military and intelligence sources in Europe and the US the Chinese embassy was removed from a prohibited targets list after Nato electronic intelligence (Elint) detected it sending army signals to Milosevic's forces.

The story is confirmed in detail by three other Nato officers - a flight controller operating in Naples, an intelligence officer monitoring Yugoslav radio traffic from Macedonia and a senior headquarters officer in Brussels. They all confirm that they knew in April that the Chinese embassy was acting as a 'rebro' [rebroadcast] station for the Yugoslav army (VJ) after alliance jets had successfully silenced Milosevic's own transmitters.

The Chinese were also suspected of monitoring the cruise missile attacks on Belgrade, with a view to developing effective counter-measures against US missiles.

The intelligence officer, who was based in Macedonia during the bombing, said: 'Nato had been hunting the radio transmitters in Belgrade. When the President's [Milosevic's] residence was bombed on 23 April, the signals disappeared for 24 hours. When they came on the air again, we discovered they came from the embassy compound.' The success of previous strikes had forced the VJ to use Milosevic's residence as a rebroadcast station. After that was knocked out, it was moved to the Chinese embassy. The air controller said: 'The Chinese embassy had an electronic profile, which Nato located and pinpointed.'

i wonder how long it will take for the full story to come out about the msf bombing.

doesn't that remind you of Mai Lai? But they don't publish the suspended captain's name. I guess it would not be difficult for a journalist to find it.
And they don't say if said Captain was suspended with pay or not. Suspended with pay is simply a holiday.

on the roof, it was painted white, they had the coordinates, MSF phoned the military constantly for 1 hour.

This 1999 excuse is not acceptable and there will be continued demands for an independent investigation. Since the US Army had the hospital site bulldozed with tanks there won't be much evidence left on the site. But the MSF have records and witnesses.

but not much more. Working tomorrow so writing tonight. It's gonna be a short one tomorrow. Meant to cover Joe Hill's Chicago funeral but that will be a long one so will have to wait until Friday when I'm off work.

Also prefer a more upbeat theme for Thanksgiving so covering Debs' 50th BD in 1905, and some uplifting quotes from Debs.

Don't feel bad for me to be working, because I love my job. I'm really lucky to have a job I like. And don't worry about the boys, they'll be getting plenty of turkey left overs when I get home. I've been cooking for us because we like having lots of leftovers in the freezer.

Hope everyone has a great Turkey day, and gets good and stuffed followed by a nice long nap.

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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.-Lucy Parsons

heh, i'm not missing koslandia right now. it feels a lot better when i put together a diary here not having to worry about whether something in it will piss off the powers-that-be. not having to think inside the constrictive bounds of partisan activism is particularly refreshing.

if I don't pop in. The other day I saw your lede "Obama is an asshole" for yet another superb story and chuckled. You said it like it is. And then thought about the possible outrage if it had been Koslandia. Once somebody used the word "lazy" for Eric Holder (think it is for his non-prosecution of financial terrorists) and shortly there was a diary crying "racism! ZOMG!".

that Turkey should be forced to go "cold turkey", no more drugs, oil, tourism and weapons. To me the Russians sound reasonably soft, like mashed potatoes, and the US can't quite decide what kind of gravy to serve. NATO seems to be fond of stuffing and all of it seems really to end up as a lot of bad tasting turkey left-overs by Friday. For that stuff nobody should die.

Wishing the Evening Blues People a Happy Thanksgiving. I will have sweet potatoes with some soft butter. May all the Turkeys do belong to you. Bon Appétit !

when (White) people here say "ZOMG! That's awful. This happens in places like Mississippi, not in Minnesota !" As if MN is an egalitarian island in the racist USA. There is a sense of "MN exceptionalism" thanks to being #1 in this & that. While it is true there are good things about MN relatively speaking, if we drill into the details, there appears a huge difference between Whites & PoC - educational achievement, wealth etc. And MN is pretty white, and same goes for the twin cities. IMHO, I think it is difficult being a PoC/person in marginalised communities in such a state because the contrast is stark - it makes them feel out-of-place than in say Mississippi.

The hellraising by the #4thprecinctshitdown sounds even more impressive given all the above. They have really garnered national attention.

I was listening to a Black radio station and heard that AIM (American Indian Movement) people with military training are actively involved in patrol and keeping the protesters safe. Those people sure know a thing or 2 about resistance don't they? Solidarity in action.

where i grew up, the klan used to march through my town on the way to their gatherings. i spent my summers up north in maine. there were no klan activities there that i ever saw. as a kid, i figured that new england was pretty free of racist assholes. then, when i was in high school, integration (and bussing) were court-ordered and i was shocked (at the time) to see that boston erupted into racial violence as ugly as you might find down south.

Even more so as I am into middle years. And as I tell often, it is like the general theme of what I come across over the last few years could fit under the general tag "Everything you know about --------- is worng" - fill in with history, society, culture blah blah blah ...

The Minneapolis police department is completely different than the rest of the city government. The city government has always seemed powerless to rein them in for some strange reason. They are a real live thug department. The worst I've seen anywhere that ever lived. I was part of the effort to establish civilian review many years ago, for all the good it did.

I have the utmost respect for the protesters in Mpls and the activist who are saying that the police were in cahoots with the white supremacist seem completely credible to me, knowing what I know about that police department.

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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.-Lucy Parsons

In the 1970s, one time friends and I were returning to California from Arizona. At the state line there was a border control post where they would stop each car and ask about agricultural products.

This was when society was still becoming more liberal / libertarian. Perhaps because my male friends had the kind of long hair that marked you as a "freak" in those days, the officer specifically made a point of saying that this was the agriculture department, not the police, and that while authorized to search for and seize certain plant products, they weren't interested in marijuana or anything like that, just possible pests and plant diseases.

Great news! Costco, the second largest retailer in the world, just committed to not sell GMO salmon!

This announcement couldn’t have come at a better time. Just last week, the FDA approved GMO salmon, making in the first genetically engineered animal approved for human consumption.

But despite the FDA’s reckless decision, Costco joined more than 60 grocery store chains nationwide -- including Kroger, Safeway, Trader Joe’s, Target and Whole Foods -- that listened to the science and consumers and made commitments to not sell this unnecessary, risky and unlabeled “frankenfish.”

While a growing number of stores have made commitments to not sell GMO salmon, there are still some holdouts. Walmart, Publix and a few others have not yet made a commitment to not sell this poorly tested fish to unsuspecting consumers.

What’s more, GMO salmon will not be labeled, keeping consumers in the dark about what we’re eating.

Check out this article by Paul Craig Roberts:Roberts.
This is the first article of a series of updates on the SU 24 shoot down. All the articles are :
Update on the Situation Around Turkey
Global Research, November 25, 2015

Laugh a little or cry a lot, the insanity continues. Sorry I haven't been around, been in and out of hospital, still need surgery. Compared to the state of the world, my course is easy peasy! Don't worry or fret about me. I'm exhausted, but fine!

for the upcoming surgery and recovery for all that was behind you. Happy Thanksgiving, Dharmasyd. I join in crying a little and laughing a little more, just to keep the heads up.

Thanks for your link. I read now what "Der Spiegel" wrote about the timeline of the Russian S-24 flights. When I understand it correctly the Russians were warned every 30 seconds (10 times in 5 minutes). Why were they warned, when they were still outside the Turkish airspace?

That also means that Turkey had five minutes time to decide, if they should shoot down the S-24. So they must have waited for the "legally" correct moment to shoot, which then only lasted for 17 seconds according to Turkey's report. Considering that the people had to ask for permission to shoot, that looks like a some cowboy-style last minute "Gotcha" moment, as if they had waited for it and just could "make" the "kill" in the very last moment. They also said that the rocket hit the S-24 so late that the Su-24 was already in Syrian space and landed there. The Su-24 landed 4 km inside Syrian territory. The pilots ejected and landed on the ground in Syria. So, when do pilots eject themselves? Before they get shot? Could they see they are going to get shot down? Was the S-24 already hit? By what? A ground to air rocket or a rocket from a Turkish fighter jet?

I don't understand the whole thing. They said the S-24 flew at a speed of 20 km/minute, which would be 0.33 km per second. The path length of the airspace violation was 1.7 miles, which means 2.735 km. (The maps of exactly where the airspace violation happened were published and the path measured in km). That would mean that the S-24 was just for ca. 0.902 seconds over Turkish airspace. But Turkey said it was for 17 seconds over Turkish airspace.

Something seems wrong, if the S-24 really flew 20 km/h it couldn't stay for 17 seconds over Turkish airspace, as the geographical length of the path of the S-24 over Turkish air space is fixed and not disputable. So, looks to me as if Turkey lied.

Oh well, now German Tornado's jets for reconnaissance purposes also get involved over Syria. What a horrible mess and imo a very weak reaction or caving in to stupidly constructed justification based on obligations Germany has to the EU and UN (helping your allies or some such - lost the link) to the situation. That's when you want to cry.

was given in Turkey's report to the Security Council of the UN. But I can't find the speed of the Su-24 anymore. It seems nobody wants to get into the data crunch anymore, just into the political impact.

According to all the maps, at its widest point, that little peninsular of Turkish land pushing into Syrian territory is about 5.39 km or 3.5 miles. Though if the incursion took place at all it is likely to have been further towards the tip.

Let’s go back to speed and distance, basic stuff we all remember from school. At cruise speed, a jet fighter of any kind is likely to travel at around 800-1000 kmh, that’s more than 10 miles or 16 km per minute (= 0.26 km/sec).
(me: somewhere I make a calculation error, but I don't know where, because I can't figure out how they came up with a 17 second long incursion)

This means, as we’ve established, if warnings were issued five minutes before the missile was launched, the “threat” aircraft would have been more than 50 miles (80 km) from the border. At that distance it would have been impossible to tell where the SU24 would have been in 5 minute’s time, especially considering that the Russian plane was, by the Turkish radar data, actually moving away from, or at least parallel to, the Turkish border.

Isn't it strange that nobody comes up with a clear calculation? Oh well, bedtime now.

And now, the science. In the video of the incident, which was posted online, it can be seen that one of the two jets got hit and starts crashing to the ground. The jet takes approximately 30 seconds to hit the ground. “Because the vertical movement is only dependent on gravity (g=9.81m/s², z=gt²/2), we can calculate that the plane was moving at a height of at least 4500 meters,” the physicists write in their blog. “That number is consistent with the Turkish statement of the jets being at an altitude of 19,000 feet (5800 meters).”
...
On the map provided by Turkish officials, it can be seen that the plane crashed eight kilometers from the place it was hit. The jet traveled those eight kilometers from the time it was hit until the time it crashed. A simple division gives an initial speed of 980 km/h, a perfectly acceptable speed for an aircraft travling at that altitude. So far, so good.
...
Then, the physicists take that speed and compare it to the distance the jets traveled in Turkish airspace according to the Turkish map, around 2 kilometers. When flying at a speed of 980 km/h, an object would cover that distance in seven seconds, instead of the 17 seconds according to Turkish reports. To cross that distance in 17 seconds, the plane should have been traveling at a meager 420 km/h. The video shows this simply could not be true, if the crash site is accurate. Physics 1, Turkey 0.

I like the way the author said that if ISIS had an Air Force they would be in the right to bomb France since France started the war on them.
I feel the same way about 9/11. After decades of the U.S. overthrowing other country's elected governments and then installing brutal dictators and then watching them torture and murder their citizens, any of those countries have the right for self defense.
I wish people would wake the hell up and understand why we were attacked that day.
But Americans only think it's terrorism when 'innocent US civilians' are killed.
Many people don't give a second thought about the millions of innocent civilians that the U.S. has killed since 1945 when it became a super power.
I've seen estimates of between 20-30 million people have been killed during the U.S.'s illegal invasions.
Over 3 million in Vietnam.
I don't remember what article I read today but a veteran was bragging about how they would take people from Vietnam up in a helicopter and ask them questions. If they didn't answer, they would throw them out. Even if they did answer they would throw them out anyway.
Why people think that our military can invade any country it wants and kill people who haven't threatened us without any consequences baffles me.
And people say that Russia is in the wrong, yet it's the only country that was asked to come to Syria and fight ISIS. All the other countries have gone against the Nuremberg principle.
The U.S. hasn't fought a war to defend our country or our freedoms for over a century.
They've been so that the corporations could steal those countries resources.
Smedley Butler told us that back in the 30's.

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America is a pathetic nation; a fascist state fueled by the greed, malice, and stupidity of her own people.
- strife delivery

The Obama administration accused Syria’s government of purchasing oil from Islamic State and blacklisted a Syrian-Russian businessman suspected of facilitating those transactions.

The U.S. Treasury Department also penalized Russian and Cypriot businessmen and companies suspected of helping the Syrian central bank evade international sanctions through a web of companies based in Russia, Cyprus and Belize.

Among those blacklisted is Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, a former president of the autonomous Russian Republic of Kalmykia. Mr. Ilyumzhinov is a long-serving president of the World Chess Federation, according to the Treasury Department.

The Treasury’s actions bar U.S. nationals from doing business with the designated entities and freeze any assets they hold in the U.S. financial system.

U.S. officials have long voiced concerns that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was strengthening Islamic State’s finances by purchasing oil produced by the militant group on territory that used to be controlled by Damascus. However, Wednesday’s charges are the most explicit and direct accusations by the U.S., and the first time sanctions have been imposed over the regime’s oil trade.

So there you have your soundbite. The Paris outrage: Made in Libya. Not Syria. And brought to us by the people who killed Christopher Stevens in Benghazi.

I am sure that Hillary Clinton is grateful to the French police for botching the raid to capture Abaaoud and pumping 5000 rounds into his apartment instead of capturing him; otherwise, he might have become a lively topic of interest and curiosity and the right wing could have cooked off the Benghazi! munitions through election day.
...
To sum up: the alleged and now reportedly deceased architect of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, did not fight “for IS.” He fought “with” Katibat al-Battar al-Libi, a Libyan outfit whose presence in Syria predates that of ISIS. Even after Katibat al-Battar al-Libi decided to pledge allegiance to ISIS, it retained its independent identity. And it would appear unlikely that Abaaoud, as a European of Moroccan descent, would be a central figure in the brigade, whose personnel, funding, and mission seem to have largely emanated from Libya.

In the next few days, we will present a full breakdown of Bilal's various business ventures, starting with his BMZ Group which is the name implicated most often in the smuggling of illegal Iraqi and Islamic State through to the western supply chain, but for now here is a brief, if very disturbing snapshot, of both father and son Erdogan by F. William Engdahl, one which should make everyone ask whether the son of Turkey's president (and thus, the father) is the silent mastermind who has been responsible for converting millions of barrels of Syrian Oil into hundreds of millions of dollars of Islamic State revenue.